What are the Different Easement Types?
When you purchase a property, like a house or a plot of land, you expect it to be wholly your own. The only people who should be on it are you and your friends and family or your employees and customers. For the most part, this is true, unless you have an easement or even multiple easements on your property.
Easements are nonpossessory rights to use and/or enter the property of another person, usually for a specific purpose. Free reign easements are rare. By nonpossessory, this means it does not give anyone possessive rights over your property, and they are still legally bound to respect it and not remove anything not in the easement from it.
What are the Different Types of Easements?
There is more than one type of easement. Each type has its common set of freedoms they give you as the property owner and the entity with rights to your property through it.
- Easements of necessity / Easement appurtenant: These are created by court order and allow people who can’t reach their own property without traveling over another property.
- Easements of condemnation: These are created by eminent domain, where the government seizes property because it is necessary to make or assist in a project for public use. Owners of the property must be compensated for providing the easement. The easement can be made if they don’t agree with it.
- Easement of prescription: If someone uses a part of your property without permission, not as a secret, out in the open, and does continuously/makes a permanent change on your property, and you say nothing of it for 21 years, they and whoever owns the property after them, may claim to have an easement.
- Party Easement: Two parties consensually agree on a border and share it by means of a pathway, wall, fence, or driveway.
Easement Examples
Not everyone has heard of easements before. Some may not know there are easements on their properties. Sometimes you may never have any reason to notice that some people, the government, or corporations have the ability to come onto your property. Some examples of common easements are:
- A dirt roadway runs through your property and is the only way for your neighbor to safely reach their property. – Easement of necessity
- A neighbor erects a fence that steps over onto your property, and you never say anything. After 21 years, you no longer have the right to remove it. – Easement of prescription
- The local government needs to use your property to raise and fix electrical wires. – Easement of condemnation
- Two neighbors agree to make and/or share a driveway for their neighboring driveways. – Party easement
How Do You Know if a Home Has an Easement?
You can’t remove easements from a property you own, but you can make sure you don’t buy a home with any pre-existing easements. With property title insurance and a title search, the Scranton real estate attorneys at Mazzoni Valvano Szewczyk & Karam can find out if there are any easements on the property you’re looking to buy or sell.
Contact our attorneys for assistance in making sure everything is in order with your property and any negotiations or litigation you may need.
